The courses were produced by Stop TB Partnership in collaboration with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Interactive Research and Development Global (IRD), KIT Royal Tropical Institute, and multiple global experts and implementation partners. These field guides rely on practical experiences and expertise of implementers and are meant to help national TB programmes and other TB programme managers to identify the best strategies for finding people with TB who are missed by routine health services.

The courses are not to be treated as guidance, but rather as a collection of considerations, tools, experiences and examples that highlight successes and challenges in implementing effective TB case-finding interventions and may assist in their planning.

The production of these field guides represents a significant effort, bringing together more than 60 experts from over 30 different institutions globally in the spirit of partnership to help address a major barrier in the TB response: the fact that millions of people with TB are still missed by the current routine health systems.

The development of the guides was generously supported by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria as part of the Strategic Initiative on TB: Address specific barriers to finding missing tuberculosis cases, develop innovative approaches to accelerate case finding, and scale up tools and approaches. The Strategic Initiative is implemented by the Stop TB Partnership together with International Research and Development Global, Pakistan, and KIT Royal Tropical Institute, Netherlands

The writing of these field guides was coordinated by Marina Smelyanskaya, under the guidance of Jacob Creswell. The core writing team consisted of (in alphabetical order) Mirjam I Bakker, Lucie Blok Andrew J Codlin, Jacob Creswell, Lisanne Gerstel, Ali Habib, Manjot Kaur, Liesl PageShipp, and Marina Smelyanskaya. Many others contributed to writing sections of different guides as well as reviewing them. A list of the writers and reviewers is presented below.

Many of the contributors attended a consultation in Amsterdam, Netherlands, in June 2018, to review and refine the draft of this guide. We thank the team at KIT Royal Tropical Institute for their support in organizing the consultation and review meeting and all participants for their time, ideas, and insights.

• Ramya Ananthakrishnan, REACH (Resource Group for Education and Advocacy for Community Health) India
• Sandra Alba, KIT Royal Tropical Institute, Netherlands
• Uliane Appolinario, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Switzerland
• Mirjam I. Bakker, KIT Royal Tropical Institute, Netherlands
• Mercedes Becerra, Harvard Medical School, USA
• Stela Bivol, Center for Health Policies and Studies, Moldova
• Lucie Blok, KIT Royal Tropical Institute, Netherlands
• Frank Bonsu, National Tuberculoses Control Programme , Ghana
• E. Jane Carter, Warren Alpert Medical School, Brown University, USA
• Andre J Codlin, Friends for International TB Relief, Vietnam
• Jacob Creswell, Stop TB Partnership, Switzerland
• Luis Cuevas, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK
• Salah Edine-Ottmani, Morocco
• Carlton Evans, Innovación Por la Salud Y Desarrollo (IPSYD), Asociación Benéfica PRISMA, Perú
• Elizabeth Fair, Curry International Tuberculosis Center, University of California, San Francisco, USA
• Lisanne Gerstel, KIT Royal Tropical Institute, Netherlands
• Elmira Gurbanova, WHO, Azerbaijan
• Dr. Stephen John, Janna Health Foundation, Nigeria
• Peter Hansen, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Switzerland
• Kyung Hyun Oh, Head, Korean Institute of Tuberculosis, Korea
• Kekeletso Kao, FIND, Switzerland
• Manjot Kaur, Interactive Research and Development, India
• Aamir Khan Executive Director, International Research and Development Global, Pakistan
• Amera Khan, Technical Officer, Stop TB Partnership, Switzerland
• Daniele Chaves Kuhleis, Brazil
• Daisy Lekharu, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Switzerland
• Lynette Mabote, AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa (ARASA), South Africa
• Farihah Malik, Pakistan
• Anna Mandalakas, Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital, USA
• Enos Masini, WHO, Kenya
• Thulani Mbatha, Interactive Research and Development, South Africa
• Christina Mergenthaler, KIT Royal Tropical Institute, Netherlands
• Peter Mok, Independent Consultant, Malaysia

• Monde Muyoyeta, Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia
• Sreenivas Nair, Stop TB Partnership, Switzerland
• Sode Novatus Matiku, New Dimension Consulting (NEDICO), Tanzania
• Drusilla Nyaboke, Republic of Kenya National Tuberculosis, Leprosy and Lung Disease Program, Kenya
• Chidubem Ogbudebe, KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation, Nigeria
• Madhukar Pai, McGill Global Health Programs, McGill International TB Centre, Canada
• Liesl PageShipp, Interactive Research and Development, South Africa
• Zhi Zhen Qin, Stop TB Partnership, Switzerland
• Oriol Ramis, Spain
• M. D’Arcy Richardson, USA
• Ataulhaq Sanaie, UK
• Melissa Sander, Tuberculosis Reference Laboratory Bamenda, Cameroon
• Anna Scardigli, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Switzerland
• Simon Schaff, Desmond Tutu TB Centre, Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
• Bogdana Shcherbak-Verlan, PATH, Ukraine
• Marina Smelyanskaya, Stop TB Partnership, Switzerland
• Robert Stevens, UK
• Pedro Suarez, Management Sciences for Health, USA
• Guy Stallworthy, USA
• Ajaykumar Thirumala, Independent Public health laboratory consultant, India
• Stephanie M. Topp, James Cook University, Australia
• Pillar Ustero, Switzerland
• Brittney van de Water, Harvard Medical School, USA
• Frank van Doren, CheckTB! Netherlands
• Wayne van Gemert, Stop TB Partnership, Switzerland
• Kristian van Kalmthout, KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation, Netherlands
• Shibu Vijayan, PATH, India
• Luan Vo Nguyen Quang, Friends for International TB Relief/Interactive Research and Development, Vietnam
• Ashvini Vyas, Asha Kalp, India
• Eliud Wandwalo, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Switzerland
• William Wells, USAID, USA
• Mohammed Yassin, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Switzerland
• Ingrid Zuleta, KIT Royal Tropical Institute

The field guides were edited by Fiona Stewart and Marina Smelyanskaya.

Design was done by Miguel Bernal in coordination with Nina Saouter.

Photography for the guides was contributed by Miguel Bernal and Shehzad Noorani.

The time and expertise of all the contributors listed are gratefully acknowledged by the Stop TB Partnership.

TB REACH is a multi-lateral funding mechanism primarily supported by Global Affairs Canada, with additional funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United States Agency for International Development and National Philanthropic Trust. TB REACH provides grants to partners for testing innovative approaches and technologies aimed at increasing the number of people diagnosed and treated for TB, decreasing the time to appropriate treatment and improving treatment success rates.  It combines fast-track, results-based financing and rigorous, external monitoring and evaluation (M&E) to produce results, so other donor agencies and/or national governments can scale-up successful approaches and maximize their own investments.

Click here to know more about TB REACH

The Stop TB Partnership is leading the way to a world without tuberculosis (TB), a disease that is curable but still kills three people every minute. Founded in 2001, the Partnership’s mission is to serve every person who is vulnerable to TB and ensure that high-quality diagnosis , treatment and care is available to all who need it.

Together our 1500 partners are a collective force that is transforming the fight against TB in more than 100 countries. They include international and technical organizations, government programmes, research and funding agencies, foundations, NGOs, civil society and community groups and the private sector.

We operate through a secretariat hosted by UNOPS in Geneva, Switzerland and seven working groups whose role is to accelerate progress on access to TB diagnosis and treatment; research and development for new TB diagnostics, drugs and vaccines; and tackling drug resistant- and HIV-associated TB. The secretariat is governed by a Coordinating Board that sets strategic direction for the global fight against TB.

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While major global TB indicators like treatment success have improved and mortality rates have fallen in past years, there is a persistent gap in the number of people who fail to receive adequate TB care each year. National TB control Programs (NTP) and their partners are increasingly focused on trying to close this gap and Stop TB’s Global Plan to End TB and WHO’s End TB Strategy both seek to ensure that all people who are sick are identified and can receive adequate treatment. Global momentum for improving TB case detection and notification further gained track in 2017 when the Global Fund (GF) put in place its  Catalytic Investments Framework. The Catalytic Investments are earmarked for different focus areas to catalyze more impact of Global Fund support to countries, such as through Matching Funds that aim at incentivizing the programming of country allocations.

For the priority area TB, the Matching Funding focuses on finding the missing people with TB. 12 countries[1] are receiving this investment, accounting together for 75% of all people with drug-susceptible (DS)-TB and 55% of all people with drug-resistant (DR)-TB who are currently missed globally. A total value of USD 115 million has been made available to these priority countries to improve TB case detection and treatment through innovative and comprehensive case finding approaches during the Global Fund Funding Cycle 2018-2020.

To further support accelerated, innovative case finding in priority countries, the Global Fund has made available an additional USD 10 million through the Strategic Initiative to Find the Missing People with TB and commissioned Stop TB Partnership and the World Health Organization (WHO) to provide comprehensive and targeted technical country support for the period 2017/18-2020. The ambitious goal of the Strategic Initiative (SI) is to find 1.5 million additional people with DS-TB and DR-TB in 13 priority countries by the end of 2019 (baseline: end of 2015), marking an unprecedented ambition level for the TB community.

The Global Fund, Stop TB Partnership, WHO, countries and partners are all sharing this ambitious target and are jointly held accountable in their action and impact. Stop TB Partnership and WHO follow a joint work plan to cover different areas of supporting countries in their planning, implementation, and monitoring of enhanced case detection interventions, as stipulated in their Global Fund approved Funding Requests/Matching Funding plans.

[1] These countries are: Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Kenya, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, South Africa, Tanzania and Ukraine.

Click here to know more about Stop TB Partnership Strategic Initiative